Page:London - The People of the Abyss.djvu/275

Rh normal condition is one of sickening wretchedness. If this is to be the permanent arrangement of modern society, civilization must be held to bring a curse on the great majority of mankind.

Ninety per cent! The figures are appalling, yet the Rev. Stopford Brooke, after drawing a frightful

London picture, finds himself compelled to multiply it by half a million. Here it is:—

I often used to meet, when I was curate at Kensington, families drifting into London along the Hammersmith Road. One day there came along a laborer and his wife, his son and two daughters. Their family had lived for a long time on an estate in the country, and managed, with the help of the common-land and their labor, to get on.